Wednesday, December 28, 2016

London Tube strike again

It is not rare for Londoners to encounter a Tube strike. Workers claim that a recent policy developed by Borris Johnson, the former Mayor of London, was threatening the security of the underground and the quality of life of workers.

Indeed, Johnson was eager to cut the cost as well as improving the service quality. Some Tubes started 24 hours running on this summer. This policy was also infamous to workers, not surprisingly.

You may know that Japanese underground is so crazy that there is no train to delay the departure time in a day. It is an astonishing fact that there are crime novels featuring the schedule of Japanese train in which the criminal has a performance to get the place of murder with some extraordinary chains of train-riding. These stories are categorized to "Jikoku-hyo" [time table] trick. Of course, if even a single error occurs on the schedule, the plan of the criminal will corrupt.

And, Japanese workers seldom make a strike, partially because most labors unions are weak. As a result, we are given high qualified service while using Japanese trains.

Compared to Japanese ones, the quality of London tube service is still unsatisfactory for my sense. It is not only because of the difference of punctuality between Japanese and British. London Tube is the oldest model of the underground. Thus, infrastructure around Tube is outdated. It will be needed for optimized movement in London to scrap and build the whole transportation system in London. And it is, of course, unrealistic. The new Mayor, Sadiq Khan, is struggling to address the puzzle, I guess.